Alex Janes is Senior Lecturer in Strategy and Director of Education for Management at the University of Exeter Business School. Prior to joining Exeter in 2009, he gained over 20 years’ management experience in both the public and private sectors. His commercial career included working in a range of diverse industries from antiques, tourism and electronics, to telecoms, trade exhibitions and education. He has worked in senior management roles and at board level in both an interim and permanent capacity for much of his career. Alex was also a part-time member of the Business School faculty at the Open and Plymouth Universities. Alex has trained and coached hundreds of marketers and managers working for organizations, from small charities to FTSE 100 companies, including: American Express; Astra Zeneca; Burberry; BT plc, Corus, Cadbury, Dominos, KPMG, Microsoft, RNIB, Royal Bank of Canada, Siemens, Tate Gallery, Twentieth Century Fox, Wrigley, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and Xerox. He continues his consulting work in strategic management and marketing alongside his teaching and research. Alex gained a postgraduate diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, where he is a subject examiner. More recently he completed an MBA and Med with the Open University.

Ciara Sutton is a Research Fellow and lecturer in the Department of Marketing and Strategy at the Stockholm School of Economics. In addition she holds the position of Area Principal in Strategy and International Business at the Stockholm School of Economics in Russia. Ciara teaches at Master’s and Executive level in Strategy and International Business, with a particular interest in cross-cultural management, and is a coach and programme leader in change management, innovation, and business planning projects in various educational and corporate programmes, primarily in Sweden, Finland and Russia. Ciara’s research interests centre on strategic issues in international venture capital and private equity, as well as the concept of global leadership and the role and competencies of global leaders in multinational organizations. She is Australian, with a BSc (Com.) from the University of New South Wales, Sydney and later earned her MSc and PhD from the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden.

Dr. Arthur A. Thompson, Jr. earned his BS and PhD degrees in economics from the University of Tennessee, spent three years on the economics faculty at Virginia Tech, and served on the faculty of the University of Alabama’s College of Commerce and Business Administration for 24 years. In 1974 and again in 1982, Dr Thompson spent semester-long sabbaticals as a visiting scholar at the Harvard Business School. His areas of specialization are business strategy, competition and market analysis, and the economics of business enterprises. In addition to publishing over 30 articles in some 25 different professional and trade publications, he has authored or co-authored five textbooks and six computer-based simulation exercises. His textbooks and strategy simulations have been used at well over 1000 college and university campuses world-wide.

Dr. Margaret A. Peteraf is the Leon E. Williams Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. She is an internationally recognized scholar of strategic management, with a long list of publications in top management journals. She has earned myriad honours and prizes for her contributions, including the 1999 Strategic Management Society Best Paper Award recognizing the deep influence of her work on the field of strategic management. Professor Peteraf is on the Board of Directors of the Strategic Management Society and has been elected as a Fellow of the Society. She served previously as a member of the Academy of Management’s Board of Governors and as Chair of the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy. She has also served in various editorial roles and is presently on nine editorial boards, including the Strategic Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review and Organization Science. She has taught in Executive Education programmes in various programmes around the world and has won teaching awards at the MBA and Executive level. Professor Peteraf earned her PhD, MA and MPhil. at Yale University and held previous faculty appointments at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management and at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

John E. Gamble is currently a Professor of Management in the Mitchell College of Business at the University of South Alabama. His teaching specialty at USA is strategic management and he also conducts a course in strategic management in Germany, which is sponsored by the University of Applied Sciences in Worms.Dr Gamble’s research interests centre on strategic issues in entrepreneurial, health care and manufacturing settings. His work has been published in various scholarly journals and he is the author or co-author of more than 50 case studies published in an assortment of strategic management and strategic marketing texts. He has done consulting on industry and market analysis for clients in a diverse mix of industries.

Dr. A. J. ('Lonnie') Strickland is the Thomas R. Miller Professor of Strategic Management at the Culverhouse School of Business at the University of Alabama. He is a native of North Georgia, and attended the University of Georgia, where he received a BSc degree in mathematics and physics; Georgia Institute of Technology, where he received an MS in industrial management; and Georgia State University, where he received his PhD in business administration. Lonnie’s experience in consulting and executive development is in the strategic management arena, with a concentration in industry and competitive analysis. He has developed strategic planning systems for numerous firms all over the world. He served as Director of Marketing and Strategy at Bell-South, has taken two companies to the New York Stock Exchange, is one of the founders and directors of American Equity Investment Life Holding (AEL) and serves on numerous boards of directors. He is a very popular speaker in the area of strategic management.